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Published on: December 18, 2016
A Postmortem Study of Frontal and Temporal Gyri Thickness and Cell Number in Human Obesity
Erick Gómez-Apo1,2, Adrián García-Sierra3,4, Juan Silva-Pereyra1
1Neuroscience Project, Faculty of Higher Studies Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico.
Objective:
This study aimed to compare cortex thickness and neuronal cell density in postmortem brain tissue from people with overweight or obesity and normal weight.
Methods:
The cortex thickness and neuron density of eight donors with overweight or obesity (mean = 31.6 kg/m2 ; SD = 4.35; n = 8; 6 male) and eight donors with normal weight (mean = 21.8 kg/m2 ; SD = 1.5; n = 8; 5 male) were compared. All participants were Mexican and lived in Mexico City. Randomly selected thickness measures of different cortex areas from the frontal and temporal lobes were analyzed based on high-resolution real-size photographs. A histological analysis of systematic-random fields was used to quantify the number of neurons in postmortem left and right of the first, second, and third gyri of frontal and temporal lobe brain samples.
Results:
No statistical difference was found in cortical thickness between donors with overweight or obesity and individuals with normal weight. A smaller number of neurons was found among the donors with overweight or obesity than the donors with normal weight at different frontal and temporal areas.
Conclusions:
A lower density of neurons is associated with overweight or obesity. The morphological basis for structural brain changes in obesity requires further investigation.
